Download Sample RSS Files (RSS 2.0, Atom, and JSON Feed 1.1)

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML format that websites use to publish a list of their recent content — articles, podcast episodes, videos — in a machine-readable way. A feed reader (like Feedly, NetNewsWire, or Reeder) checks each feed URL periodically, downloads the XML, parses it, and shows the user new items since their last check. The publisher updates the feed file whenever new content is published; subscribers don't need to visit the site directly.

RSS 2.0 is the most widely implemented version and what most blog platforms (WordPress, Ghost, Substack) generate by default. Each feed has a <channel> element containing feed-level metadata (title, link, description) and a list of <item> elements for individual posts.

Both RSS and Atom serve the same purpose — syndicating content — but Atom is more formally specified. RSS 2.0 was developed outside any standards body and has some ambiguities (the date format is loosely specified, the content model is inconsistent). Atom 1.0 is an IETF standard (RFC 4287) with a stricter, more consistent element model. Atom uses <entry> instead of RSS's <item>, requires a globally unique <id> IRI, has native full-content support via <content type="html">, and uses RFC 3339 dates rather than RFC 822.

In practice, every major feed reader supports both. GitHub uses Atom for repository feeds, YouTube's API serves Atom, and most feed readers accept either format transparently.

Apple's podcast directory requires specific elements in the itunes namespace (xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"). At the channel level: <itunes:title>, <itunes:author>, <itunes:description>, <itunes:image href="..."> (minimum 1400×1400 px), <itunes:category text="...">, <itunes:explicit>false</itunes:explicit>, and <itunes:owner> with <itunes:email>. At the item level: <itunes:title>, <itunes:duration>, <itunes:explicit>, and critically a valid <enclosure> element with the MP3 URL, length in bytes, and type audio/mpeg.

A CDATA (Character Data) section is an XML construct that tells the parser to treat its contents as literal text rather than markup: <![CDATA[ ...content... ]]>. In RSS feeds, CDATA is commonly used in <description> and <content:encoded> when those elements contain HTML. Without CDATA, you'd need to escape every < as < and every & as &. With CDATA, the HTML renders correctly when parsers extract it. Most feed generators use CDATA for HTML content; most feed validators accept both escaped HTML and CDATA.

JSON Feed 1.1 is a feed format that uses JSON instead of XML, created in 2017 by Manton Reece and Brent Simmons. The motivation was that JSON is easier for developers to generate and parse than XML, and modern web tools already work extensively with JSON. A JSON Feed has the same logical structure as RSS — a feed object with metadata and an items array — but expressed in JSON. It supports native structured authors (authors array), full HTML content (content_html), attachments, and tags.

Adoption is smaller than RSS or Atom but growing among indie bloggers, Micro.blog users, and developers who want to avoid XML parsing. Most modern feed readers that support JSON Feed also support RSS and Atom, so publishing JSON Feed alongside a standard RSS feed gives subscribers the choice.

The standard library is feedparser: pip install feedparser. Usage: import feedparser; feed = feedparser.parse('https://example.com/rss.xml'). Access the feed title with feed.feed.title and iterate items with for entry in feed.entries: print(entry.title, entry.link). Feedparser handles RSS 0.9x, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and several namespaces (iTunes, content, Dublin Core) automatically. For local files, pass a file path or raw XML string instead of a URL. Feedparser is also forgiving of malformed feeds — useful when testing against real-world feed files that don't strictly conform to spec.

RSS 2.0 uses RFC 822 date format: Mon, 15 Jun 2024 10:30:00 +0000 (day of week, day, month abbreviation, 4-digit year, time, timezone offset). The day-of-week prefix is technically optional but most parsers expect it. Common mistakes: using a 2-digit year, omitting the timezone, or using ISO 8601 format (which belongs to Atom, not RSS).

Atom 1.0 uses RFC 3339 format: 2024-06-15T10:30:00Z or 2024-06-15T10:30:00+00:00. The Z suffix means UTC. The date and time are required; milliseconds are optional. Mixing formats — RFC 3339 in an RSS feed or RFC 822 in an Atom feed — is a common bug that causes date parsing failures in strict validators.